The current education system and the 'Leonardo Effect'

There are many people who think that the current educational system is out of date, and doesn't allow people of all abilities to reach their full potential. This is due to the fact that the method of teaching children today has changed from decades ago, they now have many different stimulants in the world that engages them in a way we could never before. An example of this would be video games, Ipad's or cell phones. Ofcom reports an increase in the number of children today that use tablet computers alone, stating that 42% of children in Britain all use them. This raises the question after such gripping and engaging way of entertaining children (including 100's of channels on the television), how do we expect children to not become distracted when they are being told to focus and listen to the teacher using a whiteboard up to 5 hours a day? Especially when the learning involves sitting down and not moving, not being creative with their hands. I'm definitely not disputing that we should involve discipline within our schools, but after discovering the Leonardo Effect, the evidence of a better future for the majority of pupils could be better using this system.
The Leonardo effect truly engages the learner, the system requires the learner to be creative and think both inside and outside of the box when they discover a problem, or when they need to gain knowledge. The Leonardo Effect helps children to learn in a way that they would like to learn.


For a good example of this learner-based learning, I recently visited a school that has implemented this way of teaching. Firstly, the lessons were mostly taught outside, and I use 'taught' loosely, as most of the learning was done through play. The topic was Geography, and the teacher had begun the session with imaginary play, at first I wasn't sure they would actually learn anything, but the teacher began by explaining to the children that they were going on an imaginary voyage to different countries and were all given a role to play within the session (such as tour guide, driver.) The activity began with two questions; "Where are we going? and how do we get there?" I watched as the teacher then took a back-seat role in the learning as the children began organizing and using their minds to creatively make a giant ship from anything they could find, that could cater for the whole class. One of the children then suggested they use a map to get there, that allowed the teacher to point out various countries on the map, and how far away they were from where they were now. As they chose a country, they had to use their imaginations to watch out for dangerous animals that were found with the corresponding country, and had to think of ways to avoid these dangerous creatures. For the whole of the activity the children visited different countries and were learning without even knowing about it - they did not consider it as "work", rather an engaging play session that they so happened to be learning numeracy, geography, Critical thinking, creativity and other such skills from one play session. 

For me, that activity was all that was the Leonardo Effect, the children were engaged, thinking and learning - all in a way the children wanted to.